eWeek has reviewed Debian 5.0, and concludes: "Version 5 of the Debian GNU/Linux open-source operating system offers the same top management tools and processor support that previous versions of the Linux operating system have. There also are a host of updates to open-source components, and the Linux distribution is still a great fit for servers and a solid desktop choice. However, the top reason for upgrading from version 4 may be the relatively short three-year security fix window, less than the coverage time offered with Ubuntu and Red Hat Enterprise Linux-derived CentOS."

I think you should have gone straight to Mepis Linux! It has most if not all of the tweaks you had to do manually while still residing on the solid Debian Lenny Base and offering a fairly conservative (beautiful) KDE desktop. Mepis also has a lot of its own little applets that make mundane tasks idiot proof. You could have saved yourself a lot of time and trouble had you gone this route. :-)

Seconded. I recently installed SimplyMEPIS 8.0 on my T61 after a daily update of openSUSE 11.1 killed my video drivers, and it has been a godsend. All of my devices were correctly configured (including suspend to RAM), and the speed increase of using a Debian based system has been phenominal. Little things like Flash and video codecs were installed out of the box, and wireless on my Intel 4965 actually works without a kernel panic, unlike Lenny. MEPIS is to Debian what PC-BSD is to FreeBSD or Mint is to Ubuntu. Correctly configured right out of the box, no worries. Highly recommended to anyone looking for a fast, stable KDE 3.5 desktop.